In a message dated 4/19/05 10:03:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
drsyme@cablespeed.com writes:
Certainly there were platonic influences to later ideas about bodies and
souls as seperate concepts.

But the Israelites clearly believed that some type of spirit existed after
the body died, for they resided in Hades. In other words after the body
died there was some type of existence. To quote John Cooper:

"Death is not the end of existence. It is rather the entrance of the
individual as a ghost-and etherial quasi-bodily being, not a Platonic soul
or Cartesian mind-into the dreary and lethargic, if not soporific, existence
of the underworld, Sheol, Abaddon, or in the Septuagint, Hades."
Good discussion at this link:
http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/body-soul-spirit.html

If the spirit of God is nephesh and nephesh is doing God's will instinctively
this supports my argument that the fall was man's move from instinct (God's
will) to learned behavior (free will).